


A Rough Landing

by LauraDoloresIssum



Series: Dying Light [2]
Category: Dying Light (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Rewrite, Canon-Typical Violence, Funny, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-11-16 02:09:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18085391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LauraDoloresIssum/pseuds/LauraDoloresIssum
Summary: Kyle Crane, trust-fund baby, do-gooder, and aggressively gay, is about to be air-dropped into Harran to prevent millions more succumbing to the mysterious virus that has turned the population into zombies. A rewrite of Dying Light's opening cinematic.





	A Rough Landing

“Hello?” He tapped his helmet. “This thing on?” He couldn’t hear shit over the sound of the aircraft, despite the heavy sound mufflers in his helmet.

The voice of his GRE handler, whose name he had never quite gotten, sounded in his ear.

“I’m here, Kyle. Pay attention, this is important.”

A fancy digital HUD unfurled in his helmet, and Kyle grinned excitedly. Fucking cool. He couldn’t resist wiggling his head to test the compass and the little LiDAR minimap of the inside of the plane. He held up his arm and watched it get outlined in green, with stats in a drop-down menu next to it:

UNINFECTED

ALIVE

UNINJURED

Meanwhile, the handler’s cool, precise voice articulated clearly despite the rattling and the wind. “On final approach to Harran. Commence briefing.” A man’s face popped up in the bottom left corner, displaying his name and a status bar that just said, ACTIVE. “Kadir Suleiman. A local political figure hired to maintain order after the outbreak began. Kyle, if you don’t close your mouth birds will start to nest in it.”

He dropped his arm. “Huh? What? Sorry.”

“Kyle. I know that suit is patented tech that costs the GRE half a million American dollars per unit. But please. This is not a pleasure holiday. Mouth closed, ears open.”

“Sorry, sorry. Kadir Suleiman, local politician, resting bitch face, supposed to keep the outbreak under control.”

“His brother died in a disease-related incident before we were able to evacuate him.” The picture changed to a different, younger man, whose status helpfully read, DECEASED. “Suleiman blamed the GRE for his death. He stole a highly sensitive file which became his bargaining chip against the GRE.” A picture of a manila folder, with a nonsense name and the status COMPROMISED popped up beside it. Kyle strongly suspected they were giving him the Pretty Pictures Briefing for Dummies edition.

“He stole a file while under attack by zombies? How? What was in it? And what is it he’s bargaining for anyway?”

The handler didn’t lose an ounce of composure. “Mouth closed. Ears open. If anything happens to him, he’s going to publicize it.”

Kyle couldn’t help himself. He opened his mouth.

“They still have Internet down there, Kyle. It’s just incredibly slow and spotty.”

He closed it.

“The file contains an incomplete cure for the Harran Virus. If implemented in its current state, the results will be extremely toxic.” On the right side now, a meaningless rotating digital DNA strand with some text, [peptide analysis #64/3 Virion strain], Status: INCOMPLETE.

“In order to explain your presence in Harran, the ID you’re carrying will identify you as this man.” Another picture replaced the first, a white man with a curly black tattoo on his left temple. His name read Kyle Crane, Status: DECEASED.

“Um. That’s not me.”

“Kyle Crane, no relation to yourself or Crane Pharma. Son of Northern Irish expatriates. A lieutenant in the Harrani military, decorated and so on. Killed in action during the two-day Flood when the zombie population started exploding out of control and the military was overrun.”

“I can’t impersonate a military officer! I can’t even get a handle on Call of Duty.”

“You don’t need to impersonate him. You only need to use his name. _Your_ name. Suleiman will be keeping an eye out for any obviously out-of-place survivors, and it will help explain away your gear.”

The pilot spoke up in his other ear. “We’re there. Get ready to jump in fifteen seconds. Best of luck.”

This was the part he knew how to do. He did one last check to make sure everything was secure, and walked to the back of the plane, working his joints to make sure nothing was going to freeze up. The door of the plane cracked open, spilling light into the hangar.

He got the signal from the pilot and jumped, keeping an eye on the digital altitude reading. His handler held the next part of the briefing until he had pulled the chute. God, he could smell the corpses from up here. That shouldn't be possible.

“In order to prevent Suleiman from publicizing the file, we have instituted a citywide communication jam. Your GRE-issued radio will overcome that jamming. It is your lifeline. Do not lose it.”

“Um. I left it back on the plane.”

There was silence.

“Just kidding.”

There was a slight sound that might have been his handler suppressing a sigh. “Suleiman has since gone underground and begun using a different name. We have reason to believe he now leads one of the two main factions operating within the city. You are to find Suleiman and locate the stolen file to save mankind from a disaster of unprecedented proportions.”

“No pressure, huh?” The altitude reading said 53m, or 31 Smoots plus an ear, as he liked to think of things. He scanned the city below. It looked beautiful from a distance.

There was a click as she hung up on him.

He was descending rapidly. There was a lot of stuff on fire.

This was the part that made him nervous. He had only ever skydived into carefully maintained fields or airport tarmacs. He aimed for the middle of an empty street, next to a burned-out car, but he didn’t like the feeling of the drafts coming between the buildings.

He grunted as his chute yanked on him suddenly. Looking up, he saw it had gotten caught on a streetlamp. Yep. Classic Kyle Crane. He stared at the street, dangling a leg-breaking distance beneath him, and sighed.

On his left was a storefront with a set of cloth awnings. He eyed them. The wooden struts might support his weight, at least long enough for him to drop down safely. Or maybe not. He had to remember that they didn’t have to worry about snow here. He began tugging on each side of the harness, like a kid trying to make a swing go sideways.

Careful now.

He grabbed the wood strut with one hand and unhooked the harness with the other, then before his fingers could give out he latched on with both hands. Success! He slowly dropped himself down to the second awning, wincing as he hit. He wobbled dangerously on the edge, but flung his arms out and stayed on his feet. The wood creaked warningly.

“Shiiit.”

Slowly, he planted his ass on the strut. The ground wasn’t too far away now, only 1m according to the HUD. He slid off, and landed safely on the cracked concrete with an _oof_.

He straightened up and looked around. There was something eerie about a city that looked so deserted. He felt like he was on a movie set. Any second the cast of _The Walking Dead_ was going to saunter down the street, looking emaciated and filthy.

His LiDAR pinged.

“Oh, what the fu—”

Someone was running at him. They were screaming. The HUD outlined them in orange, then red as they closed the distance to Kyle alarmingly fast.

INFECTED

DEAD

N/A

“Oh fuck!”

And then they were everywhere. They swarmed out of the buildings, clambering out of trash cans and under cars. They were exactly what they had looked like on the news. They moaned and gurgled and shuffled and stank. Desperately, he grabbed the awning and pulled himself back up. It creaked more loudly. He huddled there panting as a little sea formed inches under him, hands impotently grasping. He gave a laugh edged with broken glass.

“Ha! I’m wise to you. You fuckers can’t climb! Ha ha, fuck you!”

Then the runner hauled itself up and slammed into him. Screaming, he toppled backward and the awning ripped open. He landed flat on his back, his helmet half-off. He couldn’t see. Fuck, his head. What direction was up?

A mouthful of needles latched onto the right side of his face and _tore_. The pain was incredible. He screamed and thrashed blindly, striking out, hitting something, something sickeningly soft and putrid, like rotten fruit. There were more mouths sinking into him, his arms, his chest, but they couldn’t get through his suit. His vision was coming back, but all he could see was blood.

His legs locked around something and hauled it off. Over the moans, he heard it strike something with a horrifying crunch that sounded like breaking bone. He writhed wildly, and actually managed to sit up. There were zombies all over him. His face hurt beyond anything he had ever experienced, far beyond that time he had broken his collarbone, or that time he had accidentally come into contact with an open wall socket in the dark.

In a second, everything seemed to slow down. He saw the screaming zombie (fucking cheater) with the back of its head impaled on part of the car, brain leaking out. He could feel fingers and teeth digging into his suit, tearing it open everywhere. So much for half a million dollars of technology. But that suit was the only reason he was still alive. In a few seconds, they were going to get past it, and then he was going to die horribly.

He thrust himself up, hard enough to shake them off, and _ran_. His chest was on fire, his face was on fire, he felt like he was going to die of a heart attack in the street. The adrenaline made everything stand out in bright, searing colors.

He came to a chain-link gate. He didn’t risk looking back to see (fucking _cheaters_ , he’d seen every fucking zombie movie there was and everyone knew some of them ran but none of them fucking _climbed_ ), he just hauled ass up and over. They shuffled after him in a wave, and clawed for him through the gate, but it held against their weight and he didn’t see any more climbers. He was shaking so hard he was stumbling. The suit was in tatters and unsalvageable, and he ripped what remained of it off, leaving a sweat-soaked t-shirt and a pair of skinny jeans. He collapsed onto a pile of cinderblocks. He was bleeding fucking everywhere.

His right eye was completely blind with blood. He coughed and put a hand up to the uninjured side of his face, but at the slightest brush a wave of white-hot pain shot through him and he bit open his lip trying not to scream.

“UAAGHH. Mmph. God. Right,” he said thickly, spitting. “No touching. Boundaries… ughmp! Boundaries are good.”

Wait. His helmet was gone. It must have come off when he’d fallen, fuck. Fuck. Fuck! He was instantly cold and sick to his stomach. _The radio_!

He reached down in a panic. To his immense relief, his hand closed around something dirty with thick rubber and hard plastic. He pulled it off. It was bright orange, now somewhat muddy and bloody, and the screen was cracked. He toggled the listen button and went through frequencies, hoping for the GRE, hoping for anyone.

There! A voice!

“Hello! Hello! Can you hear me! Please!”

A voice, wavy and distorted by static. “Hello? Who is this? Brecken?”

He realized he’d been screaming in English, like an idiot. He switched to his shaky Arabic. “My name’s Kyle, Kyle Crane! Can you help me? I’m badly hurt and there’s zombies everywhere.”

“Okay, okay, stay calm. My name’s Jade Aldemir. Are you safe where you are?”

“I’m calm.” He coughed on blood and spit again. “Yeah. I’m calm. I think I’m gonna die, but I’m calm. Uh, I’m okay for now, as long as more of those climbing zombies don’t come for me. I’m gonna need help, I’m bleeding a lot.”

“Okay. The Virals are drawn by noise, so just stay quiet and out of sight and you’ll be okay. I can send people to you, tell me where you are.”

“Um, I’m, um.” His brain seemed to be completely numb. “I can’t think. Okay, okay, I’m in a… like a little streetside courtyard, it’s fenced and it has barbed wire on top. There’s like some playground equipment, and an electrical shed, and a couple of dumpsters full of trash.”

 “Okay, don’t move, Kyle, I know exactly where you are, you’ve made it to one of our safezones. Have you been bitten?”

“Yes! All over, right on my fucking face!”

There was a few seconds of silence. He was so _cold_.

“Hello?”

A moment later she came back on, with another burst of static. “I’m here, Kyle. I’ve sent scouts to you with medical supplies. You’re gonna be fine. Just, don’t try to go anywhere.”

“I don’t think there’s much chance of that. I don’t think my legs are working. Shit!”

“Okay. Save your radio battery. I’ll be here.”

“Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Thank you.”

The line went silent. He tried to breathe normally, shivering. The zombies were moaning and pushing against the chain-link, but they didn’t seem strong enough to push it over. God, he was so tired. He just wanted to lie down for a while.

It seemed like hours before the scouts came and got him. They were masked and wearing hockey pads, in bright yellow shirts. They pushed fearlessly through the zombies and deftly swung themselves into the safezone. Kyle was freezing, thirsty, and stiff. He hadn’t moved an inch. His entire face was caked in blood. He looked at them but couldn’t speak. The adrenaline had long since worn off, and even trying to move his face was agony.

“Holy shit.” A man carrying a medkit rushed over and started cleaning him up. Another started shining a flashlight in his eyes. Someone threw a blanket around his shoulders. “Okay, two bites on the face and one on the right shoulder, cosmetic ear damage, scratches all over, blood loss, shock, dehydration. He’s still Stage One.” A water bottle was pushed into his hand, and he shakily drank some, trying to move his face as little as possible. “Can you stand?”

He tried, and felt two of them thrust their arms under to support him. “You did a good job getting off the street,” said one of them in his ear. “Not many people could have done that after what happened to you. You’re clearly a fighter, you’ll be fine.”

One of them was talking into a staticky radio. “Doctor! We’ve got an injured man here. He’s gonna need two shots of Antizin and a stretcher, he’s lost a lot of blood. Expect him at the Tower in ten. Amir, go wave something shiny in front of this bunch. We’re gonna have to get him back by street.”

Amir disappeared, and there were loud sounds down the street like a bunch of fireworks going off. The zombies turned and shuffled off, and the scouts helped Kyle over the fence.

“Sure they won’t come back?” he whispered, watching them shamble away.

“Just… walk fast.” He was half-led, half-carried, and he quickly lost track of where they were going. It all just turned into a blur of starting and stopping, concrete and occasional stairs, with the off and on pop of firecrackers in the distance. Then somewhere dark, with a single bluish floodlight.

“Wounded!” a woman called, and Kyle was pushed up a concrete wall. There were people there with rifles, and chain-link. He smelled mold.

A dark-haired woman in medical scrubs was waiting with two assistants and a stretcher. He was loaded onto it, and finally lost consciousness on the way to the elevator.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks as always. I am considering creating/posting more works in this universe depending on response, so if anyone would like to see more Dying Light, please let me know in the comments.


End file.
